Where sport can take you is so much more than you know
For a lot of the young people we work with, sport isn't just something they do on weekends. It's their lifeline. It's where they feel capable, seen, and alive. YSSI starts there — and opens a door they didn't know existed.
Most programs tell young athletes one of two things: you're going to go pro, or you need to focus on school instead. YSSI refuses both of those as the full story.
Yes — you might go pro. That dream is real and we're not here to take it from you. But there is a whole machine behind every athlete on that field. There's a director of performance technology, a biomechanics analyst, a sports data scientist, an athletic trainer who used VR to map that player's recovery. And most of our students have never met a single one of those people — which means they don't know those futures exist for them.
That's what YSSI is here to change. We use the sport our students already love — the thing they're already giving everything to — and we turn it into a doorway. Into data. Into technology. Into careers that are being invented right now.
What YSSI students actually learn
The skills come from the sport they’re already playing.
Mind
Data literacy that starts in the gym
It started with boxing.Our first students put on wearables during practice and tracked their own jabs, crosses, and uppercuts — force, speed, number of reps. Then they took that data to Google Sheets and built visualizations. Charts. Dashboards. Models. From their own fighter stats.That's not a metaphor for learning. That IS learning. When the data is about you, it means something different. Today that same approach runs through all of our programs: students collect real performance data, ask questions about it, and start to see themselves as people who can work with numbers — not because someone told them STEM matters, but because they just did it.
Outcomes:
Applied data literacy through real sport performance contexts
Exposure to sports analytics as a concrete, reachable career path
Pre/post assessment gains in numeracy and data reasoning
Body
Science that makes sport make sense
When you love a sport the way our students love their sports, you want to understand it completely. Why does a jump shot travel that arc? What actually happens to your arm over a season of pitching? What does recovery look like from the inside — not just "rest" but the actual biology? YSSI programs teach students the science of their own bodies in motion. Biomechanics. Injury prevention. The physiology of performance and recovery. Students leave with language for what they already do — and habits that protect them over the long run.
Outcomes:
Understanding of biomechanics, force, and movement efficiency
Health literacy around injury risk, prevention, and recovery science
Knowledge of how performance technology is used by professional athletes and trainers
Skills that translate from sport into lifetime wellness awareness
Technology
Seeing what's possible — for real
A head of marketing for an NFL-licensed VR company came and talked to our students. She played basketball most of her life. She wanted to get into tech. She applied for a job, and now she works with NFL players, Meta, and ESPN on immersive sports experiences. Before she walked in the door, most of our students would have heard "VR startup" and thought: that's not for someone like me. After she left, they were thinking something different. That's what we call an expander — someone who shows you that a path exists by standing on it in front of you. YSSI brings expanders into every program. And then we give students the hands-on tools — VR headsets, wearables, real data platforms — so the technology isn't just something they heard about. It's something they've used.
Outcomes:
First-time hands-on exposure to VR/AR tools and wearable biometric technology
Direct experience with the same platforms used by professional sports organizations
Connection to mentors from real careers in sports tech, health tech, and data
Student Testimonials
We don't tell students where sport should take them. We create the conditions for them to figure that out themselves. These are some of the stories that came out of that.
"My favorite part was the resistance bands and critiquing my partner — I was able to act as a physical therapist. I didn't even know that was a real career until today."
"Learning about the careers of sports and health — I didn't know there were so many options."
“When I started YSSI, I was running a boxing and science program out of a gym in Chicago. I watched students who were going through things I can barely describe — food insecurity, violence, uncertainty at home — show up every single day because sport was the one place where they felt like themAselves. Their lifeline.
And I kept thinking: we're selling these kids one dream. Go pro. Make it. And some of them might. But what happens if they don't? What happens even if they do — and they're 32 and their body is telling them something different?
YSSI isn't here to take the dream away. We're here to expand it. To show students that the world they already feel deeply connected to — sport — has a whole machine behind it filled with careers that are just being invented. And that they could be the ones inventing them.”
— Noma Shields, Founder, Youth Sports Science Institute
Rooted in Chicago.
Built for what's next.
YSSI started in a boxing gym in Chicago. It grew through After School Matters, through Chicago Public Schools, through hospital partnerships and community organizations — because the students who needed this model most were already here, already showing up, already giving everything to their sports. We work with young people on the South and West sides of Chicago — neighborhoods where access to STEM programming has historically been limited, and where sport is often one of the most consistent institutions young people can count on.That's not a problem to work around. That's the starting point. We begin where students already are.
Ready to open the door with us?
We don't show up with a fixed curriculum and walk away. We co-design with every partner, build around the sport your students are already in, and stay long enough to see something actually change.
The students we work with are ready. They're already disciplined, already competitive, already committed to something bigger than themselves. They've just never had someone show them the whole picture. Your investment does that.